


Thrown Into Confusion

by write_light



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-14
Updated: 2010-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you feel that way, there's no other word.  Even when you can't spell it.  Light and easy ain't never easy.</p><p>A.k.a. That One where Sam finds Dean's journal and reads it out loud and they just fall more in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thrown Into Confusion

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Written for [](http://spnpromptcake.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://spnpromptcake.livejournal.com/)**spnpromptcake** Cycle 2 and the prompt " **discombobulated** ".  
> 

The road stretched ahead of them, flat, straight, and seemingly endless. Kansas, Nebraska, mile after mile they drove, heading to Bobby's to drop off the knife. The cursed knife. They'd been very, very careful not to touch it, after their experience with the rabbit's foot.

In truth, it didn't cause sterility (which Bobby had told Dean) or pregnancy (which was the story he told Sam). Bobby regretted not going along -- the looks on their faces when the knife slid from the shelf where it had lain… Sam and Dean sprang back from it, Dean blurting out "No, Sam, you'll be sterile!" just as Sam yelled, "It'll get you pregnant, watch out!!"

  
***

Dean had turned the driving over to Sam on the pretext of getting some shut-eye in the back seat, where he instead scribbled furiously in his journal, page after page, keeping it low and out of sight of Sam's eye in the rearview mirror.

_discumboblated… discumbubolated... Shit._

Dean waited, hoping his brain would kick in and spare him. It didn't.

_One whiskey shot too many. Sorry about that, guys. I could really use those gray cells right now._

He scratched out the misspellings and tried a few more variants. They all looked wrong. He was going to have to ask. He took a deep, slow breath and pretended to be waking up.

"Sam…"

"Yeah." Sam stayed focused on the road.

"How do you spell 'discombobulated'?"

"What?"

"Discombobulated. How do you spell it?" He didn't get angry, didn't push. _No point in setting off the sensors._

"What do you have so far?" Sam asked helpfully – and calmly, from what Dean could tell.

"D – I – S – C – U – M-"

"C – **_O_** – M," Sam corrected, looking back in the mirror.

A long silence filled the Impala, shutting out even the whooshing of the tires.

"Keep going…." Dean said after a while.

"It's like it sounds, Dean. BOB YOU LATE ED."

Dean tried to write with one hand while looking casually at Sam and it became illegible.

The silence returned, bringing friends with it, and Dean was happy with that. When they crossed into South Dakota a few minutes later, he was smiling. Sam was also watching him in the mirror.

"Whhhhhyyy?" Sam finally asked.

"Whut?" Dean bluffed, badly. He was sitting in the middle now, alert and awake, leaning forward, all earnestness – a quality he couldn't pull off.

"Why do you need to know how to spell that word?"

  "What word, Sammy?"

"Discombobulated."

"Oh, nothin'. Just wonderin'."

"Dude, your accent.  You get all hick when you're lying."

Dean snorted, then kept silent, staring out the front window for a bit, then sitting back casually.

"Is it for a crossword?"

"Dean Winchester doesn't do crosswords."  

" _Dean Winchester_ doesn't talk about himself in the third person either. What the hell?" It came out half spoken, half as a laugh, because Dean was acting weird.

"Dean does now," he joked. "Eyes on the road, Sammy!"

Sam turned around quickly and had to swerve suddenly to get back in the right lane.  

The silence wasn't so long this time. Sam was obsessed. His eyes flicked up to the mirror, back to the road, up to the mirror, and then he saw it – Dean was writing something in a journal. One he hadn't seen before, a matte black one with a zippered edge.

"Dude, is that a diary?" he asked, knowing Dean wouldn't let it stand.

"Eyes on the road! You mess my baby up, you won't live long enough to buff the scratch out with your flannel shirts."

"What could you possibly be writing that requires that word?" Sam asked, unable to imagine a scenario. "Nothing about this mission was discombobulating. Bobby's little joke was embarrassing, but not discombobulating. The ghost we torched in Arkansas was by the book – that only makes you feel discombobulated the first time you do it."  

"Would you STOP saying that word?!" Dean bellowed, smacking Sam on the head reflexively with the journal and watching it slip from his fingers, ricochet off Sam's head and land in the passenger's seat. Sam and Dean both dove for it, Dean screaming "Eyes. On. The. Road!" but no match for Sam's longer reach.

The Impala skidded to a halt on the side of the road in Nowhere, South Dakota, Sam holding tight to the wheel with one hand and stuffing the journal in his shirt with the other. Dean was halfway over the front seat in his desperation, with an assist from Sam's sudden braking.

Sam popped his belt and opened the door, breathing hard. The sun beat down on him as he slammed the door behind him.

_Two seconds time, three max, before Dean gets around to this side._

He flipped the journal pages to find where Dean had been writing.

Behind him, Dean stepped out of the car, slowly.

"You're not going to like it."

"Are you kidding, Dean? I'm going to read it out loud. This has to be good."

Dean's face dropped, and he sighed. It was a worried sigh, Sam knew that, but he was so…

_Discombobulated. Now he's got me feeling that way._

In the light of day before God and Dean and the Impala and the waving grass of the Dakotas, he found the page and read his brother's familiar angular handwriting, now a bit jiggled from the car, read it out loud and clear –

" _I can't let Sam go. I can't watch him walk into trap after trap. I can't let Lucifer take him. He's my little brother._ "

Sam's voice dropped a little.

" _I'm going to burn in my own little hell, but I love him. I thought it was family, or big brother love, or the thrill of the hunt. Or maybe Stockhome syndrome._ "

"Stock _holm_ , with an 'L'."

Dean set his jaw and turned the wince away like it would make the pain less.

" _He turns everything upside down - my life, my plans, my car, I love him and I can't. I want him and I shouldn't. I'm ~~discumboblated~~ ~~discumbubolated~~_ "

"I crossed those out, Sam."

Sam read the rest in a very quiet voice, for which Dean was grateful.

" _…I'm discombobulated because of him, every minute of every day. Except when I'm in the bath._ "

Sam was silent now. Dean waited, leaning on the trunk, his head hanging down.

"In the bath?" Sam wondered, his voice still low and soft.

"The bath is the bath. It's a very clear place," Dean stated.

"Are you like ' _in love in love_ ' with me? Because I'm your brother. It's frowned upon. I'm sure the angels would have something to say."

"Cas didn't seem surprised."

"You told- !"

"He asked."

"He's not a really great angel, is he?"

"He tries, Sam."

The stillness returned, but it wasn't so silent. The Impala was still rumbling softly, the grass was hissing as it danced in the steady wind, and Sam was swallowing loudly. Repeatedly.

 "You okay?" Dean asked.

"Just feeling a little…

"D-"

"Don't say it! Yes, that." Sam said, eyes squinted against the sun as he re-read the line. "I like it, though. I feel that way all the time. It's not our fucked up life, it's us. It's _you_ , Dean."

"Give me that book back now," Dean said, back in charge. "I'll drive; you rest – you're not making a lot of sense. And we need to get that knife to Bobby before we're sterile or pregnant or whatever it does to you." 

Sam sat quietly for most of the next half hour, a kind of shy grin crossing his face from time to time, then dozed against the seat, snoring occasionally and finally slipping sideways against Dean's shoulder. Dean put his arm around the only thing he knew he loved that loved him back.

The route he took to Bobby's was miles longer than it needed to be.  



End file.
